The essays in this collection are an interdisciplinary examination of various aspects of Buddhism during the Kamakura era, including religious practice, literature, and institutional history. They work toward a synchronic historiography and thus provide a broader understanding and appreciation of the complexity and richness of Buddhism during the Kamakura era and of Japanese Buddhism as a whole. Contributors: Richard K. Payne, James C. Dobbins, George S. Tanabe, Mark T. Unno, Jacqueline I. Stone, Robert E. Morrell, James H. Foard

In the Kamakura period, Myoe Shonin (1173-1232) was a leader of Nara Buddhists who sought to revitalize traditional Buddhism in Japan. In his teaching, Myoe specially emphasized the value of the visions that could be achieved through meditation; and in his practice, he kept and occasionally illustrated a diary of his own visions and significant night dreams. The autograph copy of this remarkable document still exists, although some pages have been scattered among collectors. George J. Tanabe, Jr., here presents in English the most comprehensive compilation of the diary in any language. Moreover, his study of Myoe's life and teachings provides both a context within which the diary can be understood and a view of the often doctrinally contentious world of Kamakura Buddhism.

The volume introduces the central themes in and the main figures of Japanese Buddhist philosophy. It will have two sections, one that discusses general topics relevant to Japanese Buddhist philosophy and one that reads the work of the main Japanese Buddhist philosophers in the context of comparative philosophy. It combines basic information with cutting edge scholarship considering recent publications in Japanese, Chinese, English, and other European languages. As such, it will be an invaluable tool for professors teaching courses in Asian and global philosophy, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the people generally interested in philosophy and/or Buddhism.

Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan’s medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life—eating, sleeping, even one’s deluded thinking—is the Buddha’s conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts. Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute non-dualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According other readings, it represents a dangerous anti-nomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan’s medieval period. Jacqueline Stone’s groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized several medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in pre-modern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received a little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of “corruption” in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between “old” and “new” Buddhism and the long-standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that “original enlightenment thought” represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between “old” and “new” institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.

This insightful volume dispels the common notion that Buddhism is not a missionary religion by revealing Asian Buddhists as active agents in the propagation of their faith. It presents at the same time a new framework with which to study missionary activity in both Buddhist and other religious traditions. Included are case studies of Theravada, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist teachers and congregations, as well as the Pure Land, Shingon, Zen, and Soka Gakkai traditions of Japan. Contributors examine both foreign and domestic missions and the activities of emigrant communities, showing the resources and strategies garnered by late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Buddhists who worked to uphold and further their respective traditions, often under difficult circumstances. Based on anthropological fieldwork and historical research, the essays break new ground and provide better analytical tools for studying mission activity than previously available. They provide instructive comparisons with Anglo-American Protestant missionary thinking and offer insights into the internal dynamics of Sri Lankan and Japanese missions as they make their way in Protestant and Catholic societies. Also included are nuanced studies of two major missionary figures in late twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism and a fascinating look at the present Dalai Lama’s relationships with his devotees and the American government, viewed through an exposition of the abiding tradition within Tibetan Buddhism that combines mission activity with the political goals of exiled lamas. Contributors: Stuart Chandler; Peter B. Clarke; C. Julia Huang; Steven Kemper; Linda Learman; Sarah LeVine; Richard K. Payne; Cristina Rocha; George J. Tanabe, Jr.; Gray Tuttle.

Throughout human history, and across many religious cultures, offerings are made into fire. The essays collected in Homa Variations provide detailed studies of this practice, known in the tantric world as the "homa," from its inception up to the present.